


Bootlace and Crystal Grace

by polymorphic



Series: Enspirited [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, F/F, Fantasy, Femslash, Fluff and Angst, Inquisitor (Dragon Age) is not the Protagonist, Lesbian Sex, Love, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other: See Story Notes, Sexual Content, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:27:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24583030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polymorphic/pseuds/polymorphic
Summary: Zosime defers to her dwarven lover eight times out of ten, but not because she’s “good,” or selfless, or whatever ideal her parents had tried (and failed) to raise. Her motivations are quite the opposite, really, something she was quick to point out whenever they worried about her unwavering devotion—which is wholehearted, notblinkered. It’s just that when it comes to Lace Harding, Zosime is the most greedy, selfish person in the world, and she’d do almost anything to see her partner smile.One year, that meant scouting for the Inquisition and a nice pair of boots.Note: This title can function as stand-alone; it isn't necessary to read the entire series to enjoy.
Relationships: Lace Harding/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Enspirited [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1648228
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6





	Bootlace and Crystal Grace

**Author's Note:**

> This work is structured episodically, with each chapter being a self-contained story narrated by Zosime when she's old and grey. 
> 
> Please review the tags. Sex scenes are _mostly_ implicit rather than explicit. This means allusions are used to craft the scene instead of naked terms. _Mostly._ Each chapter may have additional tags as needed in the notes, so be sure to read them before you proceed.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zosime looks back on the first week of scout duty.

A branch tangled in Zosime’s hair, forcing her to pause and fish it out with a curse. She keeps the ringlets just off her shoulders, but of course that didn’t stop the undergrowth from catching in her halo of frizz every humid afternoon. It’s the same damned thing one season after another, and that year brought her so much closer to shaving it all off. But every time she complains, Harding lures her down with a laugh, thrusting her calloused fingers into the dark and springy mass.

“Don’t do it, Zosi,” she says, gently massaging her scalp, “unless it’s really that bad—” And then Zosi forgets whatever she’s ranting about, because that’s what happens whenever Harding gets too close. Lips. Lips happen.

Should she grow it out and braid it for a bun? She considered the possibility while ducking and weaving her way through the woods. What if the bun came loose while she was fighting? Enemies would be thrilled to find a convenient rope…though Harding might like that, too.

Zosime defers to her dwarven lover eight times out of ten, but not because she’s “good,” or selfless, or whatever ideal her parents tried (and failed) to raise. Her motivations are quite the opposite, really, something she was quick to point out whenever they worried about her unwavering devotion—which is wholehearted, not _blinkered_. It’s just that when it comes to Lace Harding, Zosime is the most greedy, selfish person in the world, and she’d do almost anything to see her partner smile.

One year, that meant scouting for the Inquisition and being groped by trees.

When introducing the Inquisition recruiter, Harding’s face was impermeable and hard—in need, somehow, like rangeland preparing for a drought. Zosime knew immediately what her lover wanted, but faltered with it anyway. _She_ wanted to stay home and stick daggers into all the reckless pissers threatening their farm. Mages, templars, demons…they weren’t so scary, not after seeing her neighbors turn into ghouls, not after ten years of laying them to rest.

But Zosime offered to go, knowing her lover like a riverbed knows its stream. And she complains about that labor, now as she did then, but she knows its worth. She knows after bruising her feet on gnarly roots and rotting logs; she knows after feeding her boots to hungry loam. She knows after kneeling near the fallen and defiled; she knows after chanting for the dead. She knows after flicking the blood from her blades; she knows, drenched in petrichor and week-old sweat.

She knows it deeply, universally. It’s woven into the fabric of her being, seams jagged and immutable, beckoning like the mountains which bind her homeland’s horizon. It whispers in her ears, a breathy sea of flame-licked trees, unchanging, a psithurism threaded from the past, evidence of their future’s smoke-filled green. Night ends, clouds part, sunbars fall on ash and crystal grace.

The relief in Harding’s eyes after Zosime spared her the burden of asking aloud soon counted as a favorite memory—along with certain other things which came afterward.

She never did find all her clothes.

A twig snapped and she spun around, blades drawn by the time her weight resettled in the loam. Her senses sharpened, focused on high alert.

“Too late, Zosi,” a nearby shrub admonished. Zosime blinked. It was, in fact, a rather thick and shady-looking shrub. How could she have missed it?

“It’s your fault,” she chided the suspicious plant. “Those were my favorite knickers!”

“What—” Harding laughed incredulously as she emerged from the undergrowth, “are you _talking_ about?”

“The night before we joined the Inquisition—”

“Yes, what about it?”

“The knickers I was wearing?”

“Yes, what about them?”

“You threw them.”

“I did not.”

“You did. You threw my favorite knickers! Now I have to stalk this bug-infested forest while wearing chafey knickers!”

“Zosi, you _like_ bugs.”

“That’s not the point!” They stared each other down, incense versus outrage, waiting to see whose game crumbled first. It was Zosi’s. Zosi always crumbles first. She growled and surrendered with a frustrated laugh. “What’m I gonna do with you, Lace?!”

She darted to her lover’s side and fell to her knees, sweeping her into a tight, punishing hug. Harding squeaked and hugged her back, nuzzling her face into Zosime’s dark, springy, and probably smelly mane.

“I missed you!” they sighed together, relief changing to chortles in an instant. They squeezed each other tightly, refusing to let go until their heartbeats had thoroughly re-synchronized.

The world might’ve been ending (again), but their secret place, an out-of-the-way alcove hidden perfectly by overgrown vines, remained undiscovered and unmolested. It served as one of their makeshift homes after the Blight, and it served them even better as a refuge that week. Harding was promoted to lead scout after the first day, of course; her plans to deflect the warring factions were as brutal as they were cunning, and brief snatches of privacy were the only thing keeping Zosime sane. That, and their lovemaking.

Harding swept a foot out and she tumbled into the leaves with a breathless laugh. “Rude,” perched upon her lips, a goad to be used if her lover remained standing—and she did, gazing down with boundless love in her eyes. She’s done it ever since the beginning, little pauses to deepen the catastrophic impact of those three tiny words, and the vast, terrifying breadth of them. Zosime couldn’t look away.

She opened her eyes some hours later, roused by the chill of the evening dew. She murred and stretched, then groped around for Harding’s soft belly, which makes a better pillow than does her own spindly arm. Instead, she found a stack of her clothes—all of them—neatly folded where Lace had been just an hour before. The smartass herself was nowhere to be seen.

Zosime fell back to the blanket with a sigh, overwhelmed with momentary resentment. She knew better than to suppress it and let it blow through her, a gust through a gully leaving no trace on a calm afternoon.

Lace is skilled and clever—so, so clever—but she ratchets down anything superfluous for duty. The result was such that Zosime only got to see Lead Scout Harding except for those brief trysts. Saying hello at mess in the morning? Lead Scout Harding. Accepting a report for mapping? Lead Scout Harding. Assigning routes, acknowledging messages, choosing campsites, it was always Lead Scout Harding. Hellish as things were during the Blight, she’d never once omitted her affection or attachment to Zosi. There had been no professional code of conduct, or whatever it was that developed around that blasted uniform. Whose _was_ that eye, anyway? If it couldn’t bear to see their actual lives, what was even the point of it?

She flopped onto her belly, wincing when roots gouged her ribs. She’d always been a gamey sort, but scouting, running, and fighting were far more demanding than farm work, and the suddenness of it left her bones unpadded. Asking for second helpings while the Inquisition was giving all of its extra rations to her displaced neighbors was…she scowled. Good. The work was good. _They were doing good._

Zosime’s mind returned to Harding. Lace hated her name just as much back then, feeling it a terrible mismatch. Her parents wanted her to be a little lady, delicate and fine. Zosi thought it was a hilarious wish for a seamstress and a trader to have, but she kept her mouth shut, seeing how it’s rude to comment on someone’s dreams like that, and seeing how Harding had already informed them by her actions where they could hang the responsibility for it. Only family is allowed to call her Lace, found or otherwise—something Zosi never abuses with injudicious repetitions or teasing. Mostly.

But at the time, Zosi felt like she’d been lumped in with the code-switch; during the Inquisition, she was a part of “Lace” while everyone depended on, and saw, “Harding.” Up until then, her presence in Harding’s life, and Harding’s life in general, was far less compartmentalized.

Her lips twitched at the sound of not-quite-stealthy movement approaching the alcove. She could never mistake Harding’s footfalls—her solid, compact strength spread over a small surface area, not at all suited for stalking prey up close. The steps paused just outside the entrance.

“Zosi, it’s me.” Vines rustled, and her thoughts parted with the woodland curtains themselves, leaving a jagged feeling in their wake. Unwilling to expose Harding to the final dregs of her misplaced resentment, she pretended to sleep.

Time stretched, and the distance between them filled with the sound of unlacing boots. Pull-widen. Pull-widen. Pull-wiggle-widen. Wiggle-widen-pull. Weary sigh of relief, light thud, repeat. Zosime could see every detail with her eyes closed. Harding’s ruddy hair wisping forward as she leaned over her knees. The mild frown of concentration shadowing her freckles as she tried, and failed, to see over her heavy breast. The stubborn refusal to extend her foot and lean just a bit further. The slight, pleased jump of her brow when finding the leading end of the knot. Her lips pursing while she coaxed the taut laces from their hold. Especially after exposing them to the elements, and especially after they shrank and hardened to the point of inflexibility, she’d sit patiently on the stoop to loosen their creaking, vice-like grip. “Just pry them off,” Zosime would say. “Dinner’s getting cold!” Then Harding would reach for the leather balm and give her a sidelong smile, one too significant for smelly old laces. “They keep me on my feet.”

Harding gingerly touched her back.

“Zosi,” she called quietly, voice pitched low enough for it to be slept through—or ignored. Zosi’s back rounded for her shorter lover as she closed the distance, a habitual accommodation long since passed into the realm of reflexes.

Harding always began respectfully when she touched Zosime’s body; she moved her hands like an artist, using light, purposeful strokes—fingertips for brushes, palms for palette. Zosi’s favorite thing was Harding’s callouses. Her first two fingers were rough from drawing the bowstring, and her third and smallest fingers were relatively smooth. Harding mercilessly exploited this advantage, rhythmically alternating fingertips along Zosime’s breasts, catching and smoothing her nipples, strumming new notes while the old ones still hummed in her flesh. _That’s_ what she started while Zosi was angry, cunning beast that she is, keeping on until Zosi was shifting around in pleasure, continuing with her hand snaked between her legs, pressing and stroking and delving until pleasure overwrote her thoughts.

It was unfair, and Zosi reciprocated with a punishing kiss, running a hand down her lover’s flushed skin. Harding’s body has always been strong and stout, hard in some places and soft in others, and wholly beautiful. Zosime can never stay angry with her. She nudged open her knees with her chin and teased while she watched, lips brushing down soft inner thighs. Harding’s warmth filled her mouth, and she blurred, tongue coated and salty-sweet. She licked and probed and pleasured, edging until Lace called her name.

It was well past dark by the time they returned to the Western camp. Charter was waiting for them, her smile half-reproach, half-respect. Zosime gave a shameless wink. She learned long ago that life was lived in the small moments, the in-between ones, the ones which can only be obtained through ill-gotten means, through beg, borrow, and stealing. It would be weeks before Lace returned to their bed, but now she could love Lead Scout Harding, instead. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on voicing: You may have noticed some voicing shenanigans, and I thought I'd spoil it for people just in case I don't add many episodes. If you'd like to know, bloop down a line or two ♥. 
> 
> Hi! Zosime herself is the narrator of this story, but she's telling it far into the future when she's old and wrinkled. As such, the slips between tenses are all intentional and should give hints about the current worldstate.


End file.
